


signs of biding

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blade of Marmora Leader Keith (Voltron), Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Post-War, Season 8 does not exist, Stargazing, Touch-Starved Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26650984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: Shiro’s a patient man. But Keith works too hard, and after his return from yet another mission, even Shiro has had enough of waiting.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 220





	signs of biding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anionna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anionna/gifts).



> For Nieisha (@illusorytactics) and my 200 follower fic giveaway! Nieisha, it was such a pleasure to write for your prompt! You are such a great reader and I love seeing your recs on my timeline.
> 
> Prompt: Instead of having Shiro be the workaholic, what if it were Keith? And Shiro could be the one to try and convince him to slow down and take time for himself. I’d love if there was also a confession

If you want definitions, here is one: a lover is one who waits.  
Sridala Swami, [_Barthes Tells the Story Wrong_](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150272/barthes-tells-the-story-wrong)

* * *

Shiro feels like a golden retriever about the whole thing, but he’s still standing in the hangar when Keith’s ship lands. It’s the only way he’s guaranteed to catch Keith before he has to debrief from this last mission and prepare for the next: what with the transition from an elite and secretive special-ops force to a humanitarian organization, the Blade of Marmora have been leaning heavily on Keith to act as a bridge between the war-that-was and the peace that is haphazardly trying to establish itself. It means that Keith spends more time off-planet than he spends on it; Shiro’s stuck on Earth, since he’s the only one who can reliably contact Keith with Coalition business, and even that’s dicey. 

It’s been almost three months, this time around.

He didn’t realize how much he missed Keith — how much he relied on him — until Keith left the planet. Shiro’s a self-sufficient man with incredible drive, but even he — paragon of the Galaxy Garrison’s space exploration program, former Black Paladin, and a veteran of the Imperial Galran Conflict — needs someone around to laugh at his jokes. Keith has always managed to see Shiro’s humor in a way that’s a little subversive and a lot supportive; everyone else is too ingratiating, or they just assume he’s serious. Without Keith around, he’ll end up on a poster again. 

Keith disembarks from his ship. Hunk is the first to meet him. 

Hunk feels things deeply and without reservation, and it makes sense that he’d want to welcome Keith back to Earth. But Shiro has been aching to lay his prosthetic against Keith’s shoulder and surreptitiously check his vital signs. Keith always looks tired after this kind of mission and his pulse is more sluggish than usual, more than can be attributed to his physical fitness and tendency towards slight dehydration. Shiro — just wants to reassure himself. 

Keith shows up at the next morning’s meeting in clean clothes and with his hair pulled back in a scraggly bun — he must have the worst space-lag if he’s not even braiding his hair — and gives every sign of having read the meeting brief. Shiro has definitely read the meeting brief, but he’s not nearly as focused. 

Keith rattles off the inventory the Blade distributed at the edge of the Kuiper Belt — there’s a refugee outpost there — but as soon as the meeting ambles on to the next item on the agenda, all of the focused  _ presence _ seems to slide off his face. Shiro thinks about something Hunk said: Keith is probably lonely.

Shiro is a terrible friend, if Keith is lonely. 

After the meeting, Shiro commits a minor diplomatic falsehood in order to kidnap the senior representative of the Blade of Marmora. It’s practically tradition; when Shiro was a junior officer and stressing about qualifying for his Kerberos examinations, he made a point to schedule breaks in his day to chivvy Keith off-base. Keith would never have imposed himself on Shiro, the way Keith doesn’t seem willing to admit his own exhaustion now. 

“I need your help with something,” he tells Keith, easily, like he wants to go over a flight plan Keith has submitted. 

“Anything,” Keith tells him, and follows. Shiro could feel guilty about that, if he chose — Keith doesn’t deserve underhandedness — but he chooses, instead, to feel satisfied. 

Shiro shepherds Keith along one of the long hallways of the Garrison, and into the ground vehicle storage, and onto the back of a hoverbike. “It’s just this way,” he says, and Keith — must be more overworked than Shiro thought, or just trusts Shiro  _ so much _ , because he loops his arms about Shiro’s waist and leans into him as the bike takes off.

The hoverbike he’s borrowed isn’t quite meant for someone so long, and he has to lean heavily into every maneuver. But this has the benefit of encouraging Keith to rest against Shiro’s back. Keith feels small like this, and it makes Shiro feel like he could stand between Keith and the rest of the universe.

Shiro likes his size. He didn’t always — shooting up to six-four in his first year at the Garrison was a slog of inappropriately-timed hunger, growing pains, and awkward limbs. He’d been half-afraid he’d be reassigned to a different flight class, too, but the manual only listed a minimum height requirement for pilots. There wasn’t a height  _ limit _ , and the Garrison had checked — they loved rules. 

Shiro drives along the edge of the compound, pointing out fortifications and asking Keith benign questions about how the walls compare to what he’s seen on his Blade missions. 

“I’m not sure,” Keith half-yells into his ear. Neither of them are wearing helmets. (Shiro’s never bothered; if he’s going to fall off a hoverbike and split his skull open, he doesn’t want to survive the indignity. Keith probably doesn’t think he’s worth wasting a resource on.) “That’s more an engineering question. I could probably fix ‘em if we were in a firefight and needed a boost, but I don’t make the stuff.”

“Sorry,” Shiro yells back. And, to twist the knife: “I never know what you’re learning out there!”

Keith doesn’t say anything. The way he holds tighter to Shiro’s waist, though; it feels contrite.

Shiro ought to be ashamed of making Keith feel guilty, but — he isn’t. It’s a useful emotion in this case, because Keith doesn’t comment on the way Shiro drives them off base and out into the desert, farther away and for much longer than he implied they'd be gone for.

Shiro finally pulls over at the remains of a rocky outcropping near where Shiro used to challenge Keith to races. Letting Keith burn off steam was the only reliable way to keep Keith feeling like he could bear being part of the Garrison. The Garrison made a lot of fuss about tolerating Keith because Shiro vouched for him, but that’s not strictly true. The Garrison wanted to keep Keith around, because his flying was so good it got described as otherworldly. Shiro was just as responsible for keeping Keith from doing a runner, and wasting (as Sanda would have said) all those piloting instincts before they could be monetized. 

The cliff is gone: it looks like a ship crashed into it, or a laser cannon cut a chunk out of it, the way Lance engulfs whole slices of pizza when Shiro’s unfortunate enough to sit near him in the cafeteria. Shiro wonders if Keith ever drove his bike off the edge of that cliff, before the war destroyed it. It’s not something they’ve talked about. 

“I lied, when I brought you out here,” Shiro tells Keith. “I didn’t need you for anything — I just wanted to spend some time with you.”

“I know what that’s like,” Keith forgives him easily, with a laugh. Shiro doesn’t find it amusing.

“Anyway,” Shiro continues, “it’s been a while since we had a chance to get off base. What’s really going on, during your missions?”

Keith bristles. “I submitted a complete report — !”

“Hey, I know.” Shiro soothes Keith with a firm hand on his shoulder — his human hand, so he can cup his fingers past the wing of Keith’s scapula, and count the ridges of his cervical vertebrae,  _ one-two-three _ . “I just mean, it’s been a long time since I got to explore out there. I wanna hear about it.”

“Oh,” Keith wilts a little, and Shiro takes the lack of resistance as permission to pull him closer, to sling his arm fully around Keith’s shoulders. It could be companionable; but Shiro’s not feeling like a buddy. 

“I miss the stars,” Shiro says. “I didn’t think I would, when we got back from space. I thought I’d be fed up with recycled water, and no showers, and low-gravity, and processed food gels. But there’s nothing like waking up and going to the observation deck.”

“The stars are stars,” Keith says. He’s never been romantic. “But it’s nice. It’s supposed to be quiet out there, but the Blade ships are old. A lot of moving parts, a lot of refitted systems. I kind of like it; it’s rickety, but the vibrations get into my bones. It reminds me of piloting Red, when we’d fly through an asteroid field, and the only thing I could do was lean into the movement. Commit to it.” 

Black was a bigger craft than Red; Shiro doesn’t know what it was like, to move fast in a smaller ship. But he remembers racing in the canyons with Keith, the way the hoverbikes kicked up dust and debris and pelted his legs and arms. He remembers stripping off his clothes after returning to his quarters and scrubbing red dust from his skin. Shiro’s a fastidious man, but he liked the physicality of the dust even when he had to wince past a muscle spasm, the way it reminded him that he had a body and knew how to maneuver it. Atlas is a hulk in the best kind of way, no comparison at all t; the little Galra cruisers Keith’s been piloting. Older ships require a level of creativity most pilots just don’t have. 

“Sounds good,” Shiro says, because what Keith’s doing  _ is _ good, even if Keith doesn’t think it’s adequate. 

“It’s good enough,” Keith says. He slouches into the weight of Shiro’s hand, even though it makes him seem even shorter. This posture makes it even easier to touch more of Keith, all at once.

Shiro touches Keith a lot. He does it on purpose. Training for long missions in enclosed spaces with a small crew involved rigorous psychological testing, and Shiro’s therapist always stressed the importance of touch in maintaining social bonds. Shiro thinks that knowledge is part of why he was so profoundly miserable when he was a gladiator: he experienced touch, all right, but it was intimate violence. Human skin is so receptive that most people can interpret the  _ tone  _ of a caress in less than a second, without setting eyes on the caresser. Shiro occasionally got moments of gentleness when the medics gave him the Galra equivalent of a sports massage, to make him limber for the next fight. It felt good and Shiro hated it. It’s more than Shiro thinks Keith ever got during his own  _ annus horribilis. _

Shiro thinks about that, sometimes: that until Keith touched Shiro’s face in the med tent, the last time Keith had been touched was when he got thrown out of the Garrison. It must have been like living through a famine.

After all they’ve been through, Keith still doesn’t lean into others much. Shiro’s seen Hunk sweep Keith off his feet into one of his exuberant embraces, and he’s seen the way Keith and Krolia grasp forearms: loving, but distant. No one slings an arm around Keith’s shoulders, no one draws him in and  _ holds _ him, not like Shiro does. Shiro doesn't think he’s staked a claim, much as he’d like to — he knows how important it is for Keith to even have civil conversations with other pilots, let alone lead his own organization, and Shiro’s not about to sabotage that for him. But no one approaches Keith with the simultaneous tenderness and confidence that Shiro knows he radiates. It’s obvious and a little embarrassing, judging from the comments Krolia’s started making about “getting on with things,” and the way the space wolf has started herding the two of them closer and closer to one another whenever they’re in the same room. 

Shiro knows all of these things. But  _ Keith _ doesn’t; and as long as Keith doesn’t realize that he has a relationship to build with Shiro, that his touches have intent, it’s hard to move the conversation forward. 

As the stars rise in the sky — faintly; there’s a lot of pollution left over from the war — Shiro keeps a firm hand on Keith’s nape, and reels him in to rest against his chest. Keith comes willingly, in that sweet way that means Shiro might be able to convince him to sleep before checking in for his next mission. 

“You falling asleep on me?” Shiro asks.

“Who needs sleep,” Keith sighs. Shiro can’t help but worry at how thin he’s looking. Space messes with metabolisms and muscle mass, and no matter how much Keith works out in the cargo bay, he always comes back from deep space missions looking a little gaunt. Shiro hopes he's been taking the bone density supplements Kolivan mandates for all Blade personnel on mission rotation, but it’s just as likely Keith’s forgotten. 

“You  _ need _ sleep,” Shiro says. He scrubs his fingers into that little hollow under Keith’s braid, against his scalp. Keith’s hair is slightly oily and extremely fine, like a furred animal. The back of Keith’s head is humid beneath Shiro’s palm. “I’ll be your tether.”

“Did you want to tell me something?” Keith’s at the stage in his exhaustion where he falls silent when he’s unsure of how to respond to Shiro’s sappier declarations. Shiro is beginning to despair of being subtle; then again, he’s seen the way Keith fights. Subtlety might not be called for. 

“It’s a secret,” Shiro reassures him. “I can tell you in the morning.” If this part of their lives was an episode of the Voltron Show, he’s sure their old teammates would be gathered around the screen, yelling at him for being both obvious  _ and _ an idiot. 

“Tell me  _ now _ ,” Keith says, petulant in a way he hasn’t been for years. It shocks Shiro, that he’s known Keith for so long that he can think about it in terms of  _ years _ . 

“I’ll tell you now,” Shiro promises. “But only if you swear you’ll believe me in the morning.”

Keith scoffs. “I’ll always believe in you.”

“That’s not the same thing.” But Keith is looking up at him expectantly, clear-eyed. “Fine. I love you, you know.”

“I know,” Keith says. Then, after a pause, “Wait. That’s it?”

“Not much of a secret,” Shiro agrees. “I love you, and I think you work too hard.”

“You could have  _ said, _ ” Keith complains. He looks offended.

“I suppose this is our first real disagreement as a couple,” Shiro muses. “There’s a betting pool, you know. We can really clean up if we pretend we’ve been together for a few months, though, I think most of the Paladins have their money on the armistice anniversary.”

Keith sputters incoherently for a few moments. He looks younger when he overreacts. It's probably unwise for Shiro to think Keith’s cute when he’s offended, but he likes the reminder that neither of them are old men. 

“Now will you listen when I say I miss you?” Shiro asks wistfully. “You must have known, Keith. I know you love me.”

“Everyone knows I love you,” Keith says. He sounds grouchy, but it doesn’t mean much. He hasn’t pulled away in the slightest; Shiro hugs him tighter for a moment, just in case.

“Exactly.” Shiro bends to kiss him, but the gesture is somewhat ruined by Keith’s posture. Shiro’s flexible, but he’d rather not throw his back out. “If you don’t stand up straight I’m going to carry you home and put you right to bed,” Shiro threatens.

“Yeah?” Keith laughs then, and yawns, and finally relaxes, like he’s going to be good and listen to what Shiro says from now on. Even if he doesn’t, Shiro has permission now to keep Keith from working so hard.    


“Yes,” Shiro promises. 


End file.
